In the consumer product market, many products produce revenue for the manufacturer through the sale of associated consumable products after the original or primary product is purchased. For example, a manufacturer may give a product such as a shaver handle away knowing that they will make money from the consumer selling the consumable razors. Similarly, a manufacturer may sell a larger piece of equipment such as a fax machine or printer at cost with the understanding that they will make a profit selling the toner or toner cartridges. The combination of different pairs or groups of supporting and consumable products run across the full range of consumer and industrial products including household, office, food and a wide variety of industrial products.
Within such markets, competitors will often copy the consumable portion of the product and undercut prices of the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to sell the consumable product to consumers. As a result, the OEM manufacturers who have invested substantial money in the research and development of their products continue to look for ways to make it more difficult for their competitors to utilize the competitor's products within the original equipment.
As one example, there are currently many products that use physical keying systems to prevent unauthorized products from being used within devices. Mechanical keying systems require that the physical geometry between the original equipment and consumable product must match. Such systems may include physical rings with specific geometry (male and female) that are made to fit together, keyed slots, non-standard dimensions and other systems. A general example of such a system may be aligned slots between products such as the core of a paper towel roll that must be inserted into a corresponding slotted core of a dispenser.
The challenge with physical or mechanical systems is that they are easily defeated either by the competitor or by the consumer. That is, the competitor may simply manufacture products with similar geometries or the consumer by using various tools will modify the geometry of the OEM product or the competitor's product to make the products fit, thus defeating the intentions of the OEM.
Still further, another common method of defeating physical systems is simply to refill the container if liquids or other substances are being dispensed. For example, a restaurant may use the dispensing equipment of a name-brand manufacturer but then re-fill the dispenser with a generic product thereby “passing-off” the generic product as that of the name-brand. Not only does this action deny the OEM of revenue from the re-fill product, it also diminishes or degrades the value of the name-brand product.
In the past, other keying systems have been utilized that require both physical and electronic connection between two or more devices. This type of physical/electronic system will often add a significant constraint to the design of the OEM product and is often limited by typical problems associated with maintaining a physical contact between devices such as dirt and water contamination and/or corrosion by environmental factors that may ultimately affect the reliability of the product and lead to customer dissatisfaction.
As a result, there exists a need for an improved system and methodology that enhances the ability of OEM manufacturers from having competitors produce consumable products that can be utilized with the OEM equipment.
In particular, there has been a need for an inexpensive wireless system that provides effective electronic coupling between devices wherein the coupling enables the exchange of information between the devices in order that the origin and/or authenticity of one device to another can be determined in order to enable or deny the cooperation between those two devices.